Honore de Balzac Quotes
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Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer – Death has never forsaken any man.
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The events of human life, whether public or private, are so intimately linked to architecture that most observers can reconstruct nations or individuals in all the truth of their habits from the remains of their monuments or from their domestic relics.
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White and shining virgin of all human virtues, ark of the covenant between earth and heaven, tender and strong companion partaking of the lion and of the lamb, Prayer! Prayer will give you the key of heaven! Bold and pure as innocence, strong, like all that is single and simple, this glorious, invincible Queen rests, nevertheless, on the material world; she takes possession of it; like the sun, she clasps it in a circle of light.
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Who shall ever tell how much an unmerited disfavor crushes a shy person? Who can ever depict the misfortunes of timidity?
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Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane.
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We are scarcely apt to berate the source of enjoyment.
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What is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood?
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Admiration bestowed upon any one but ourselves is always tedious.
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Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.
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If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemy's trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on whom the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties instead of overcoming them one by one ... he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent.
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The secret of the nobility and beauty of great ladies lies in the art with which they can shed their veils. In such situations, they become like ancient statues. If they kept the merest scarf on, they would be lewd. Your bourgeois woman will always try to cover her nakedness.
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Emulation admires and strives to imitate great actions; envy is only moved to malice.
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At fifteen, neither beauty nor talent exist: a woman is all promise.
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Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.
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A woman in love has full intelligence of her power; the more virtuous she is, the more effective her coquetry.
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Imaginative, sanguine men will never recognize that in negotiations the most dangerous moment of all is when everything is moving according to their wishes.
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When passion is not fed, it changes to need. At this juncture, marriage becomes a fixed idea in the mind of the bourgeois, being the only means whereby he can win a woman and appropriate her to his uses.
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If we all said to people's faces what we say behind one another's backs, society would be impossible.
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Marriage must perforce fight against the all-devouring monster of habit.
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Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing.
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The causes that govern the heart appear to be wholly alien to the results achieved. Are the forces that moved a desperate criminal the same that fill a martyr with pride, as both mount the scaffold?
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In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.
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The response man has the greatest difficulty in tolerating is pity, especially when he warrants it. Hatred is a tonic, it makes one live, it inspires vengeance, but pity kills, it makes our weakness weaker.
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We are never either so wretched or so happy as we say we are.